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3rd SM clip on website

Ellen Crimmell has kindly given me permission to post her video of her rescue oldie Chester, who has SM and has a full range of symptoms. This is an excellent video as she narrates it and explains what he is doing.

Note: Though Chester is clearly uncomfortable with aspects of his SM he is not in severe pain and this is very watchable and informative. In particular you can see the distinct sort of scratching and headrubbing he does -- symptoms many people have a hard time distinguishing from nomal behaviour.

It was nice of Ellen to share that with us.... and how brave Chester is. All mine seem to have itchy spots and Woody will sometimes roll around the floor when wet or rub his face when he has eaten - are these symptons if the have nothing else?

It's very interesting to watch but also very sad. Ever since I first read about this condition on this web site I very often wonder about Max. He often scratches his ears but then again his ears seem to get matted and I'm forever trying to brush them out which he hates so it's a massive chore.
He doesn't do the 'bunnyhop' or anything like it while out walking but he does quite often rub his face and body into the bed or couch or floor when he's excited - but he seems to get pleasure out of it....I still just not sure which is normal behaviour or not. He is still only 16 months old so I guess it's something to look out for if its there at all.
can they be scanned in Ireland?

Sandra/Claire that mostly sounds like normal behaviour. It is when it gets extreme or odd in the way they do it that there's a point of concern -- but even then you'd really want to be seeing something really distinctive and indicative of pain, before going to the expense of scans. The reason I put up Leo's and Chester's videos in particular is that you can see better what constitutes odd behaviour. leo would have those sessions 10 or 20 times a day, lasting a minute or two, and nothing would distract him from scratching. That's different from a normal scratch where a dog almost always will stop scratching when called.